Luigi Cherubini has frequently been implicated in Beethoven’s heroic style. His opera overtures seem to have provided compositional models for Beethoven, and early nineteenth-century audiences recognized a shared ‘éclat triomphal’ in their orchestral writing.Footnote ¹ Furthermore, the story of Lodoïska has similarities with that of Fidelio: Floreski is searching for his sweetheart Lodoïska, imprisoned in the castle of the tyrannical Baron Dourlinksi. When the pair are finally reunited, however, they face immolation in the now extravagantly blazing and collapsing castle: Titzikan has come to avenge the baron’s cruelty with his band of Tartar soldiers. In the final moments, Dourlinksi is seized and Titzikan rescues the lovers from the fire. They all celebrate the triumph of freedom and virtue. Musical echoes of Haydn and Mozart can also be heard – and the plot has further resonances with Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Yet although this opéra-comique enjoyed 200 performances in its first run at the Théâtre Feydeau in Paris from 1791, and was performed in Vienna in 1799 and 1802 (its overture was also heard regularly during the first decade of the century), Lodoïska dropped out of the repertoire, perhaps viewed as too obviously a pièce de circonstance. It is rarely heard today, and seldom considered in its own right as a cultural-musical document of the revolutionary period in Paris.

This new recording offers us the chance to listen with new ears to Lodoïska.Footnote ² Jérémie Rhorer has brought together his period band Le Cercle de l’Harmonie and a team of young singers. The lively performance captures something of the excitement of the age. In 1791, audiences had been overwhelmed by the energy of Cherubini’s orchestral writing: the Mercure de France castigated the composer for an ‘excess of beauty’ and an ‘overabundance of effects’, while the Almanach ventured that ‘never have French ears heard until now a music more expressive and full of character’. The relatively large orchestra is undoubtedly the greatest strength of this recording: a combination of quick tempos, vibrant and individually distinct period instruments and strong contrasts together present an invigorating sense of the drama, which is enhanced by the chorus.

While the orchestra transports us thrillingly back in time, the solo singing is less secure, though a commitment to dramatic expressivity compensates (up to a point) for the lack of consistent technical control. The audible struggle brings home to the listener how demanding this style of vocal writing is: agility, lightness and precision are required, together with power and expressive range. The tenor parts in particular are high (the upper range would have been sung in a voix mixte, although this aspect of historical performance is not usually adopted in modern interpretations). Here, much of the singing is delivered mezzo-forte, without much nuance of dynamic expression. Nathalie Manfrino in the title role has some intonation problems, particularly in the earlier numbers (Act 2), and brings rather laboured vibrato to the slower passages; the top of her register is not always sufficiently controlled. Nevertheless, she provides strong dramatic characterization in the more urgent scenes: Lodoïska’s challenge to Dourlinksi in Act 3 (‘Tournez sur moi votre colère’), demonstrates her barely controlled fury beautifully. Sébastien Guèze as Floreski is suitably impassioned, though he doesn’t always achieve the required lightness in the upper register of this (high) tenor role, written by Cherubini for the celebrated Pierre Gaveaux (whose libretto for Léonore was later set by Beethoven). Philippe Do as Titzikan is more successful in both conveying the drama of this gallant, heroic tenor, and maintaining a more consistent tone in the upper range. When the pair first encounter each other in front of Dourlinksi’s castle Act 1, their mutual suspicion gradually gives way to a brief but moving declaration of brotherhood that looks ahead to the shoulder-to-shoulder duets of the next century. The smaller roles of Dourlinksi (Pierre-Yves Pruvot), with echoes of Mozart’s Count (and anticipation of Beethoven’s Pizarro) in his Act 3 vengeance aria, and Floreski’s servant Varbal (Armando Noguera), whose first aria seems to echo Leporello’s catalogue aria, are beautifully characterized, and present fewer distracting technical challenges for the singers.

Unfortunately, the spoken dialogue is cut to a minimum, obscuring the opera’s careful dramatic pacing and denying audience or singers a moment to catch their breath between numbers, which are mainly fast and furious. This is a shame, as the singers are almost all native French speakers, and the clear and precise diction that characterizes their singing would surely have extended to the rest of the action, enabling the whole to be understood as an integrated piece of musical drama.

The range of vocal textures and effects in the opera is striking. Although the plot is advanced through spoken dialogue, action continues through passages of recitative and in solo and ensemble numbers: the vocal lines flow and interweave as they convey the unfolding narrative, and draw in oppositional choruses (notably in the Act 1 finale). Cherubini also developed the simple strophic ariettes of opéra-comique into more complex aria forms, which here add emotional depth to the characterisations. The most successful numbers on this recording are the ensembles. The Act 2 finale is terrific fun: Floreski and Varbal have been put up in the castle by a suspicious Dourlinksi, who tries to drug them with a sleeping potion. Having switched their cups, so that Dourlinksi’s guards fall asleep, they are on the point of escaping to find Lodoïska when the tyrant appears, and the pair are taken prisoner. Such scenes depend on singers who can act – in the sung numbers as well as the dialogue – and on the quick-fire exchanges and physical comedy borrowed from contemporary spoken theatre. Here the soloists take on the challenge with relish and to good and audible dramatic effect.

The most thrilling moment of the opera for audiences in 1791 was the attack on Dourlinski’s castle led by Titzikan and his men, an event that obviously echoed the storming of the Bastille almost exactly two years earlier. It is accompanied by a quasi-programmatic battle symphony, interspersed with spoken reports on the progress of the rescue, and culminates with Dourlinksi’s defeat. The Feydeau became known during the 1790s for its imaginative and technologically demanding stagings matched by similarly breathtaking orchestral effects (Cherubini’s next opera, Eliza, culminated with an avalanche). Here, as the castle blazes and panic-stricken figures dash about the stage, we have an anticipation of the sublime musical landscapes that German theorists were to hear in Haydn and Beethoven after the turn of the century: repeated and sequenced motifs give a sense of the ungraspable scale of the physical and moral fight, while the inevitability of resolution and triumph is heard (subliminally?) in the tonic/dominant alternation underpinning the drama.Footnote ³

The only other commercially available recording of this opera is that of Riccardo Muti (Sony, 1987), who conducts the orchestra and chorus of La Scala, Milan, with an experienced cast of singers, including Mariella Devia in the title role. Although Muti’s vocalists offer a more assured performance – and sound effects are audible during the storming of the castle – Rhorer’s orchestra captures the energy and excitement of the period more successfully. Indeed, it is in this climactic scene that the differences are most evident: the slightly faster tempo, the lighter articulations and the nimbler period instruments together sweep the listener up in the drama as first Dourlinski’s forces seem to be winning, then Titzikan’s men. Muti’s orchestra feels rather weighty in comparison, making heavy weather of the repetitive language. The critic François-Joseph Fétis was to look back on Lodoïska as creating a revolution in French music, through relentless effects and dynamism that mirrored political events. With this performance, one can imagine how memories of intensely lived experience might have magnified the emotional impact of similarly violent scenes in the opera house.

Lodoïska, then, marks an important moment in music history: on the one hand, Cherubini heard Haydn’s symphonies in 1780s Paris, and they clearly influenced his symphonic approach to opera; these in turn inspired Beethoven’s politically charged writing. On the other hand, Cherubini synthesized aspects of different operatic and theatrical traditions in a manner that can be traced through to the grand operas of the July Monarchy. Listening to this recording, one is struck by the transnational and transgeneric fluidity and openness of Cherubini’s writing, which was in some senses recaptured in 1829, with Rossini’s synthesis of Germanic symphonic writing, Italian vocal forms and French traditions of spoken and sung drama and scenic effects in Guillaume Tell (1829). Rossini similarly demanded much from the best singers and orchestra in Europe, and captured the ‘musical electricity’ of the moment – on the eve of another revolution.